1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly to an image forming apparatus having a function for providing information regarding the image forming apparatus by electronic mail.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in order to check the state of image forming apparatuses installed at the offices of customers, there is a method of having a maintenance person patrol and inspect the image forming apparatuses installed at each of the offices by foot. In the inspection, the maintenance person obtains/confirms information of each image forming apparatus (image forming apparatus information) such as information of malfunctioned areas, status information, and information of various settings. Thus, the maintenance person fixes the malfunctioned area when an abnormality is found.
Other than inspecting the image forming apparatuses by foot, information may alternatively be obtained by a method of installing Web server software for HTTP communication in the image forming apparatus and conducting HTTP communication with a remote management computer using WEB browser software. With this method, the image forming apparatus transmits HTML data including image forming apparatus information to the remote management computer via a communication line. This allows the remote management computer to understand the state of each of the image forming apparatuses installed at the offices of the customers.
With the conventional method, however, there is a problem when an image forming apparatus is located in an inside network (e.g. LAN) having a firewall for restricting access from an outside network (e.g. the Internet). The firewall is often set to prevent request packets of HTTP from entering a computer in the inside network from an outside network such as the Internet. This is a security measure for prevent inside information from leaking to the outside. Accordingly, the conventional method is unable to conduct HTTP communication from an outside network, such as the Internet when an image forming apparatus is located in an inside network (e.g. LAN) having a firewall situated between the inside network and the outside network.
Furthermore, in the case of communicating with HTTP protocol, it is difficult to prevent unauthorized computers from accessing the image forming apparatus once the IP address of the image forming apparatus becomes known.